School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Schools [are]...institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so;… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop - then they blame… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that,… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon,… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships — the one-day variety or… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive:… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to maintaining that… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time,… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“Any economy in which the most common tasks are the shuffling of paper, the punching of buttons, and the running of mouths isn’t an… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra! — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
![“Schools [are]...institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood.” quote by John Taylor Gatto](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b0a/john-taylor-gatto-4736_childhood_schools-are-institutions-monopolizing-th_2843107.jpg)
![“As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. (...)Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen…” quote by John Taylor Gatto](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/95b/john-taylor-gatto-4736_age_as-a-writer-politician-scientist-and-bus_517341.jpg)
